Thursday, November 9, 2017

Thursday, January 26, 2017

I thought it might be fun to build a musical instrument. I decided to design my own concoction comprised of a cigar box guitar body, hurdy gurdy wheel crank, mountain dulcimer fret scale, tenor banjo neck, and 3/4 scale cello strings. In the tradition of the great hurdy gurdy luthiers of antiquity I carved a face (my wife Martha) on the tuning head stock. I worked sporadically on it whenever inspired between sculpting animated film maquettes. I really enjoyed the intuitional process of designing it as I built it. I even decided to add an internal auxilary soundboard for extra tone and volume. On the bittersweet day of completion I tuned up the three cello strings to an open C, turned the crank handle, and discovered that it actually worked!